Jul/091
Superhero Movies
As I pack for Comic Con tomorrow I’m naturally thinking about comics and movies. I am not a comic book fan, but I love superhero movies. I’ll go see any movie about a superhero, even if I have never heard of the character. I may lose some of my movie geek cred to admit that I had never heard of the X-Men or Ironman before the movies, but still I was in the theater opening weekend. What is the draw of superhero movies? They have ready made ingredients for entertaining stories with emotional hooks. First, the stakes. These movies are always about good vs. evil. The bad guys are really bad and the good guys are really good. The rooting interests are clearly defined with strong protagonists and antagonists. Secondly, superheroes have issues. How do they deal with their superpowers? How do they fit in with ordinary people? Do they have anything resembling a real life? How do they handle the responsibility that comes with the job?
With all of these juicy elements why do some superhero movies succeed and others fail?
The biggest mistake filmmakers make is concentrating on action at the expense of character. Yes these movies are effects laden with cool fights and lots of explosions. However, none of these bells and whistles work if they are not connected to the emotional story of the characters. What do these guys want? Iron Man is a despicable arms dealer who experiences first hand the damage his weapons do and has a change of heart. While he spends the rest of the movie trying to make up for his past indifference, he doesn’t shed his playboy persona. Batman has lots of baggage, having witnessed the death of his parents when he was a child. Now he must fight evil without becoming dark himself. He pretends to be a playboy to cover up his agenda. Spiderman can’t be with the woman he loves because his fighting evil keeps getting in the way of their relationship and putting her in danger. These stories are full of conflict and heartache, giving the films a strong emotional core. All of these movies have amazing action and special effects, but what makes them stand out is what the heroes are going through – all relatable, watchable stuff. Furthermore, these characters’ issues are complex enough to sustain more than one film.
Jul/092
Moon & Solaris
MOON and SOLARIS have the same premise – strange goings on at an isolated space station. The main characters Sam (Sam Rockwell) in MOON and Chris (George Clooney) in SOLARIS are trying to figure out what is happening to them. Yet MOON works and SOLARIS doesn’t. Why? The short answer is the emotional journey of the characters. Sam’s is compelling and Chris’ isn’t. Sam’s one lifeline is getting back to see his wife and baby daughter after his three year tour on the moon with only a robot for company. As he slowly falls apart, he discovers the truth of his situation. He is a clone with a three year life span. The bottom of the space station is full of drawers of other Sams waiting to be activated and take over running the mining operation. There is no going home. He is perpetually enslaved. We are rooting for him to escape. For him to return home that is only a memory, to his wife and baby daughter, who aren’t waiting for him anymore. This dilemma is incredibly compelling with complex thematic questions about what it means to be human. These Sams aren’t the “real” Sam, but their emotions and feelings are just as human and just as real. Don’t they deserve a chance too?
SOLARIS wants to examine these same kinds of themes, but falls short. Chris is dealing with the death of his wife. We learn about their tempestuous relationship in flashback, including that she committed suicide. This should be an emotional set up. But we never hook into Chris’ grief because he is so disconnected. It is clear that he loved his wife, but it is also clear that they were not good for each other. He is ambivalent about losing her because she was so difficult. This ambivalence makes him hard to root for. He seems cold instead of damaged. Even when his dead wife miraculously shows up on the space station, his reaction is muted. This is not a heart-felt reunion. Instead he is cautious, sure that she will be just as troubled as before. If Chris had welcomed this second chance with his wife, the movie would have been riveting. It would have been a tragic love story and a story of wish fulfillment. Instead, we just don’t care about them. Furthering this feeling of disconnectedness, the explanation for the strange events is philosophical rather than being grounded in any sort of reality. The characters posit that the planet they are orbiting is connected to God or is God. This idea is cerebral rather than emotional so that the movie feels like a philosophical exercise instead of an entertaining story. Even in science fiction movies with big themes, the story must be rooted in compelling, relatable emotion.
Jul/090
Terminator Salvation
Oh where to start. This movie was a major disappointment. When you are working with a franchise, the most important thing is not to throw out the characters and situations that have been set up in past movies. The first misstep was in creating the new character Sam. The movie immediately became about him instead of the franchise hero John Connor (Christian Bale). Marcus (Sam Worthington), a human who’s been turned into a machine, is compelling as he struggles to understand his humanity. He’s figuring out not just who he is, but what he is. A story, especially a big epic action movie, cannot have two heroes and that is what the addition of Marcus did to the franchise. He even dies heroically, giving his heart to John. Besides Marcus usurping John Conner’s role, the idea of a human terminator feels ripped off from the cylons in the rebooted BATTLESTAR GALACTICA series.
Here’s what I think the movie should have been. At the center of the story is John Connor as the reluctant leader of the Resistance. We see him struggle with the burden of knowing his future. He has doubts about his ability to be the leader that his mother told him he would become. In TERMINATOR 3 we met his future wife Kate and she was a gutsy woman. I wanted to see Kate in a kick ass role instead of barely having any lines. Also, in the movie she’s pregnant. Impending fatherhood would be a further burden to John Connor. He would want to defeat the machines to make a better world for his child. In the last movie Kate and John come together as partners in the fight against the machines. I wanted to see this partnership continue, to see the evolution of the couple as leaders of the Resistance. I would want to see John meet his father Kyle Reese, who through the wonders of time travel is a kid. In the movie they barely have one scene together. Their screwed up father son relationship should be at the heart of the story. The movie should be John mentoring the kid and becoming a father figure to him. All of this is emotional, juicy stuff. None of which is in the movie. Kyle and John don’t have a relationship. Kate hovers in the background, saying nothing. We never see John lead so his men’s loyalty is a mystery. What is supposed to be his rousing speech to the troops asking them to stand down from the planned attack is vague and nonsensical. Sigh, the movie could have been so good. Nothing bums me out more than wasted story opportunity.
Jul/091
Public Enemies
Your protagonist and your antagonist should always be just as interesting. If your hero isn’t dynamic enough, often it’s because your villain is lacking charisma as well. They each need the other to push against. If the main character has no one to react to, he can feel flat. This is especially important in a movie like Public Enemies, where you’re spending equal time with both. Public Enemies is about a ruthless FBI agent, Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) tracking the gangster John Dillinger (Johnny Depp). In this story the roles are reversed. The criminal John Dillinger is actually our hero and the lawman Purvis is the bad guy. However, John Dillinger is much better developed than Purvis. Consequently, when Purvis is on screen the movie is a big snooze. Here is what we know about John Dillinger: he’s loyal, an adrenaline junky, charming, cocky, and in love with Billie. We even know how he became a gangster. A small robbery as a youth landed him ten years in jail where he met his gang and learned how to be a better criminal.
Here is what we know about Purvis: he’s an FBI agent. We see killing and torturing, but we never know how he feels about any of it. It would have been a much more gritty and compelling picture if we knew that he was haunted by his actions. If he were a man doing terrible things for what he thought were the right reasons. If he struggled with his choices. For example, when he carries Billie to the bathroom after she has been tortured, he expresses no remorse or disgust about what his underling did. He is like an automaton, which is very off putting. Purvis has the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, asking him to do corrupt things and he never blinks. What does he think of these orders? How does he feel about taking orders from a publicity hungry politician who has never arrested anybody in his life? The movie goes out of its way to tell us that Hoover isn’t qualified to be running the FBI, but we never know what Purvis thinks of him. John has Billie. Does Purvis have any sort of personal life? How does his career affect it? In the final crawl we learn that Purvis committed suicide in 1960. I guess we’re supposed to take from this that he was troubled by his actions. It would have been a stronger film if we had seen his mixed emotions or any emotions all along.